


Our Encounter

by LunaStoat



Series: Of Lockdown and Hardwire [2]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Pregnancy, Transformer Sparklings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 05:07:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20483357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaStoat/pseuds/LunaStoat
Summary: Lockdown recalls finding a carrying Hardwire and taking her in, not out of compassion... Though the feeling crept up on him the longer she stayed with him, much to his shame.





	Our Encounter

**Author's Note:**

> So, basically a continuation of "Shared Rumbles" that takes place a millenia later, right before Lockdown finds and kills Ratchet on Earth in Age of Extinction. Yes, I have an affinity for pregnancy in my stories. Luckily, this one doesn't have a graphic or even explicit depiction of birth like my other fics have.
> 
> Again, from Lockdown's POV.

I was not so soft when I found her.

I remembered her, quiet in the strip of space she had granted herself in the lab, glancing up from her work every so often to size me up with those distrustful optics. I knew her when she was the assistant of that old fool who took pity on me. She was there when I betrayed his trust and ruined his philosophy; I know she saw it coming. Even after all that has transpired, I will always remember her for being so observant, yet speaking so little of her suspicion. 

And when I found her, wandering aimlessly from her shuttle she’d crashed on a planet so strange to her, I could tell she remembered me. Against her will as though she were any other prey, she was brought onto the Knight Ship, as weak and unable to fight back as ever. Onboard, my medic and I found that she carried; that is why I kept her alive. 

She despised me; I could see the hatred burning in her optics every time I spoke to her. Or Pit, every time I was in her line of view. Had I been any younger, I would have taken that as a reason to have fun with her sensitive audials. However, I took pity upon her condition and demanded she be cared for, making sure that, as my prisoner, she was comfortable. She already saw me as the young mech I was when I stole from her boss; I did not need to give her more reason to.

She was constantly in recharge. When I wasn’t watching from where she could see me, when she didn’t have her guard up, her optics were glazed over, half lidded, and wistful. The longer she was here, the more clear it became to me: she missed her old boss. Truthfully, I could not fault her for that; Ratchet was one of very few mech that were sympathetic to her. I was not among such mech when I had first met her, nor was I when I captured her. However, some part of me - an insignificant, irritating, nagging bit of my spark - started to believe that perhaps I wanted to be. 

I would go into her room to fish conversation out of her - reminisce about the old medic, ask her how the sparkling was doing, the like. More often she would snarl and get herself worked up until her antennae sparked or I simply left in frustration. However, there were times where she would willingly speak. She still mostly kept her answers short and vague, but gradually our visits grew to real conversations. There were times where she even nearly let me touch her, only to lean back and hold up her servos the last klik. I felt her desperation in her EM field; she was a lonesome mecha. She told me an incident had banged her up so badly that they put her in cryostasis, and that she had only just awoken from it, thousands of years after Cybertron had been emptied. All she wanted was her master; instead, she got me.

I wasn’t with her initially when the sparkling decided it was time to emerge. I couldn’t tell if I was irritated or moved by the sound of her cries echoing through the halls of the Knight Ship for the first few orns of the solar cycle, but they had driven me to join her in the medbay. I don’t want to believe that she was too weak to snarl and glare, but that she didn’t simply because she didn’t want to. Because she was in such need of comfort that she couldn’t afford to drive away the one source offered to her. I stood at her side, whispering any words of comfort I had to offer and regurgitating them again when I ran out, until she allowed me to hold her. I stayed even as her shrieks grew louder, her pain stronger, and her optics leaked lubricant, until my medic held her sparkling. I don’t think she even looked at the bitlet; my medic took it merely as exhaustion. 

We left her to rest, my medic with her sparkling and myself back to my cockpit. There, I discovered we were in Earth’s orbit. Orns later, when I’d landed, I was called into the medbay. She had vanished.

I want so badly to be angry, yet my spark will not allow itself to be engulfed in rage. I cannot bring myself to feel any resentment toward her; I should have known she would never trust me, after all. She’d sized me up, made up her mind about me long ago. And after all, what she did was smart. She and her sparkling would not have survived had she gone through the rest of her carriage alone. She took advantage of the care offered to her, at the hands of those she distrusted, then made her escape when she no longer needed it. I could only commend her for that. And to say nothing of how heavily guarded the Knight Ship is...

I believe she is out looking for Ratchet now, spark pining to reunite with her old master. I almost want to feel sorrowful to think that he is next on my hit-list and that I am already on his trail. Then, she will truly be alone. The poor mecha will be wishing I would come kill her, too, for the use of the insects that rule this backwater planet. I have the feeling that, fickle as the humans are, she will not be granted such a wish.

I have made my peace with my loss of her, but one question remains: How could someone that worked so closely with someone as benevolent as Ratchet abandon a sparkling?


End file.
